We have a case for the courts

IN the preceding weeks, I addressed three of the many historical wrongs of Indian indenture in British Guiana (BG). The first is the unclaimed remittances that went to the colonial state. The second is how the planter class shifted the financial responsibility on to the indentured servants by asking them to contribute to their return passage when it was believed to be “free.”
Notice that Indians were asked to contribute to their return passage and not to the passage before leaving India, why? The planter class was aware that if they had asked Indians to contribute to the latter, Indians would not have left India. They took advantage of the indentured Indians while they were “trapped” in BG, which was another violation within a larger violation. The third is that many Indians did not use up their right to return passage or received land which benefitted the colonial state.
Add to the above is that nothing was “free” in the indentured contracts. This was a farce. The contents of the contracts were misleading and manipulative insofar as they were free. Indians paid for their arrival and return passage, housing, medical care, and so on. These expenses were factored into the contract without the Indians realising them. They paid for these so-called free services with their bonded labour and wages. These dynamics speak to the unethical side of the contract.
Before I proceed with some calculations to determine how much money might have gone back to the colonial state if Indians did not use up their right to return to India, it is instructive to remind readers of a few pointers. To recall, if Indians did not use up their right to return home that meant they did not receive any land either, since the agreement was to exchange their passage for a small parcel of land.
This land-exchange policy was abolished in 1903 after being in practice for about 10 years. Those Indians who were waiting to go back home after 1903 had the option of using their return passage or remaining in BG of their own accord. I pause here to say that, and I repeat, that less than one percent of Indians received land.
I would do anything if anyone would show me the evidence that indentured Indians received large tracts of land from the colonial state, as so peddled in Guyana from one generation to the next, since Indians arrived in this colony in the 19th century.
To piggyback on the last column, I use the year 1924 to do the calculations. To remind readers, in 1924, about 56, 616 Indians out of the total population of 124,967, however, were still residing on the estates. Some 17,331 were children. We can say that these individuals did not own any land.
We know that these adults were either brought from India or born in BG before the land policy was abolished in 1903. What percentage out of the 40,000 (subtracting the children) in 1924 were waiting to use their return passage is not precisely known. Again, I think about 50 per cent or 20,000 were waiting to use their return if they so desired. I calculated in the last column that returnees contributed about US$400,000 from 1920 to 1955.
Let us see how much money the colonial state would have saved If Indians did not return to India, meaning forfeiting their right to return home. Of the 20,000, males made up 15,000 and females 5,000.
For males, it would be US$360,000 (24 x 15,000) since the return expense was split 50/50 (see my last column) and for women, it would be 32 x 5,000 (the colonial state paid two-thirds of the passage) making it US$160,000. So, the colonial state would have saved US$360,000 + US$160,000, a total of US$520,000, if the returnees did not go back home.
Again, Indians did return, and so I estimate that at least 10,000 went back from BG to India from 1920 to 1955, which meant Indians would have contributed half of US$520,000, while the colonial state would have also saved half of the amount as well regarding the return passage.
However, whatever the amount of saved money, it was from the return passages of Indians, which the colonial state used to settle them in BG, a sacrifice closet by the colonial state. In closing, and from my calculations, and analyses of the three violations of indentured contracts, Indians in BG during indenture were deprived of more than US$3 million.
I estimate this figure in the modern era is worth at least US$6 million. We have a case for the courts (Lomarsh.roopnarine@jsums.edu).

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